Page 13 of Valentine's Day Daddy

“I didn’t want to go in the first place if you remember correctly,” I tell her. “I agreed to go but I didn’t agree to actually take part in that game.”

Emma grins and shakes her head. “You’re so good at finding the little loopholes that you should have been a lawyer.”

“I’m still young. I could always go back to school.”

Emma stares at me then turns my laptop back around so it’s facing her again. “Well, just for fun, let’s open up this email anyway.”

“Let’s not.”

With a couple of clicks, Emma opens up the email and looks at me with pursed lips and a general air of disappointment. I can’t help but see a glint of curiosity in her eyes though.

“What?” I ask.

“Well, somebody clearly intrigued you enough to write down their number.”

“I didn’t though.”

“But you apparently did.”

She turns the computer around to let me see the screen and sure enough, the number eighty-three is staring me back in the face in big, bold letters.

“Do you remember who number eight-three was?” Emma asks.

I shake my head. “Not a clue. I wasn’t really paying attention, to be honest.”

She mutters something under her breath and shakes her head as she turns the computer back to her. Emma rolls the cursor over the number and double-clicks on the link and her eyebrows go up as a wide smile crosses her lips.

“What?” I ask.

When she turns the computer around again and lets me see what’s on the screen, my heart falls into my stomach and a groan of misery passes my lips. Staring back at me is a picture of Ezra Mullen’s smiling face. It’s his professional photo from his corporate website and he’s every bit as handsome in the picture as he is in person.

“It must be fate,” Emma says.

I laugh. “I did not write his number down.”

“You must have because here he is.”

I rack my brain, trying to remember writing his number down. I don’t remember doing it though. I sat there, made nice with everybody who sat down across from me—more or less—and played the game just to get Emma off my back. I had tuned out most of the night though, to be honest, and don’t remember writing down Ezra’s number.

“You need to call him,” Emma announces.

"I don't."

“You do,” she says. “I mean, why wouldn’t you?”

“Because he’s an arrogant, smarmy jerk?”

“And he’s obviously interested in you,” she says. “He wouldn’t have written your number down otherwise.”

“I doubt that. I’m pretty sure he was only at the event for publicity,” I tell her. “Besides, he looked pretty cozy with that woman who was up on stage emceeing the event. I’m sure he’s sleeping with her and I have no—”

“They’re not sleeping together.”

“How would you know?”

“Because that woman was Mimi Hollins,” she says and stares at me with wide eyes.

“You say that like I should know who that is.”

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